The U.S. Air Force is making use of iPads instead of heavy flight manuals, and it's saving quite a bit of money in doing so.

The Air Force said it would save over $50 million in the next 10 years thanks to its recent deployment of iPads. The iPads eliminate the need to print thousands of flights manuals on paper, which proves to be heavy on planes.

According to Major Brian Moritz, Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) program manager, removing all of the paper alone results in $750,000 in fuel savings annually (since the extra weight requires extra fuel). Weight varies from 250 pounds in a four-person C-17 up to 490 pounds in a C-5 with 10 crewmembers.

Add this to print and distribution costs, and Moritz said the Air Force is saving $5.7 million per year with the iPads. This equates to over $50 million in a 10-year period.

The Air Force's Air Mobility Command (AMC) scored a $9.36 million contract to deploy 18,000 iPads. Today, AMC aircrews are using about 16,000 of those iPads while the other 2,000 are being distributed amongst other Air Force units.

Aside from just cost savings, the iPads also prove to be helpful in finding information quickly. The keyword search alone helps pilots work more efficiently in emergency situations instead of searching through dense manuals.

Apple has been working its way into the military through more than just iPads, though (and to more branches than just the Air Force). In March of this year, it was reported that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) planned to purchase 650,000 iOS devices. This included 120,000 iPads, 100,000 iPad minis, 200,000 iPod Touches, and over 20,000 iPhones.

The purchase was to replace old BlackBerry handsets.

Earlier this month, the DOD approved the use of Samsung smartphones running a secure version of Android called Knox. Other versions of Android and Apple's iOS are currently awaiting approval as well. These decisions are expected to be made by the end of May.

quote: Things like flight manual applications don't exist for Android tablets, while iPad applications like this are already being used in aviation: http://www.foreflight.com/

Security is a HUGE issue with the DoD. They would NOT use an off the shelf app. Also, the number of available apps is irrelevant as far as the DoD is concerned for the same reason. And to answer my question above, Android based hardware WAS approved before the Apple hardware was. For some reason Apple was chosen for this purpose (likely because some commander or commanders kid uses it at home...yes some decisions are made because of that).